Debt Binge Drives Stocks Into Risky Territory BY JACK PITCHER Investors have never been more eager to ratchet up their stock returns through margin loans and funds that amplify gains and losses. It may be a sign of trouble. U.S. margin debt, or what investors borrow from their brokerages to buy securities, rose 54% to a record $1.4 trillion in May from a year earlier, according to Finra data. Meanwhile, high-risk leveraged exchange- traded funds that produce double or triple the daily move of underlying stocks are growing rapidly, as is trading in options tied to them. The risks surfaced last week in South Korea, a market dominated by highflying semiconductor stocks and rife with investors eager to pile on leverage. Korean stocks gyrated, triggering circuit breakers meant to stop losses on the way down. As the souring mood spilled into U.S. trading, hitting AI-related stocks, a chorus of investors and ana- lysts sounded the alarm that leverage was building up here, too. “I’m fear...
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Chinese Spies, Smuggled Drugs Fuel Takaichi’s Security Push Sanae TakaichiPhotographer: Toru Hanai/Bloomberg Save Translate Takeaways by Bloomberg AI Sign up for the Next Japan newsletter, for an inside view of the forces reshaping Japan, and what’s next for its businesses, markets and consumers. Chinese spies stealing Japanese industrial secrets in boardrooms. Chip smugglers ferrying Nvidia’s prized artificial intelligence semiconductors via Japan. Drug gangs quietly slipping fentanyl across Japan’s borders to a US opioid crisis. Across a range of industries, Japan’s economic-security vulnerabilities have been on display in a slew of recent incidents. The cases show how foreign actors increasingly see Japan as an attractive target — and, in some instances, a convenient gateway — for espionage and other illicit activities. That’s helping drive Japan’s most ambitious economic-security push in years under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, a longtime advocate of stronger safeguards...
Alan Greenspan Loved America, Capitalism — and Gold June 27, 2026 at 5:00 PM GMT+10 Saved Translate Takeaways by Bloomberg AI “Do you ever indulge?” Alan Greenspan, then in his early nineties, asked with a twinkle in the eye. We were both flagging — it was four in the afternoon, and we had been laboring since nine — and I replied, flustered, that I might have done a bit as an undergraduate, but those days were over. The former Federal Reserve chairman immediately got up from the large table where we sat, walked over to his desk with a surprisingly jaunty step given his back problems, and produced a slim package wrapped in silver foil. We then sat in silence munching on his secret stash of dark chocolate. I had never met Greenspan when our mutual editor at Penguin decided it might be an idea to put us together to write an economic history of the US, eventually published as Capitalism in America: A History . The ex-Fed boss concluded that I passed his ideological test largely becau...
Private Credit Is Making Bets on Consumer Debt at a Precarious Time Billions are flowing from firms like Blue Owl and KKR into Buy Now, Pay Later companies. It's an untested model and skeptics are worried about what happens in a downturn. Illustration by Arnaud Aubry Saved Translate The private credit industry was dubbed “ shadow banking ” as it took business away from traditional lenders. Buy Now, Pay Later companies have been referred to as hawking “ phantom debt ” that falls outside Wall Street’s typical tracking methods. Now, these two more opaque corners of finance are overlapping in a big way — and catching the attention of credit raters, former regulatory chiefs and others on guard for potential risks as US consumers show mounting signs of strain . Officially known as “forward-flow agreements,” investing heavyweights like Blue Owl Capital Inc., KKR & Co. and Elliott Investment Management are increasingly agreeing to pre-purchase billions of dollars worth of loans before ...